Fuji XF 23mm f2 WR - The little lens that does it all … but can I justify it’s newer bigger brother?
Overview
I’ve used the Fuji XF 23mm f2 WR lens for the last three years and it’s become my most used lens. It was the second lens Fuji lens I purchased after the XF 35 f1.4 and it almost immediately became glued to my XE1 and subsequently my XT4. Yes I went from XE1 to XT4 … I skipped a few steps, but that’s a testament to Fuji’s quality and fun factor. It took that long before I found a need to move on. So why a review this lens in 2022, 5 years after it’s release? With the new XF 23mm F1.4 LM WR finally shipping I find myself questioning whether there’s a need to upgrade again, so why not write a little review of sorts while I reflect and decide whether it’s worth it for me. After all, the XF23 f2 WR packs an incredibly versatile focal range into a convenient package, what more could I want?
X-T4 - XF 23 f2 WR - ISO 160 - f8 - 1/640sBuild & Handling
It’s a little metal and glass brick. In typical Fuji fashion the entire body is made from metal, from mount to front element. The only possible exceptions to that might be the aperture ring and the front name plate, but regardless it’s wonderfully built. There’s a pleasing solidity to the thing with no rattles, clunks or any noises whatsoever.
Equally as wonderful is holding and using the lens. I was a little worried about ergonomics of the small lens with bigger hands, but it’s just large enough to grasp for stable two hand shooting. To me it’s about as small as I’d go before becoming a challenge to hold. It fits perfectly with smaller XE bodies, and well enough with the bigger XT4 though not quite as proportional. The aperture ring turns and clicks with a satisfying resistance, providing just the right amount of feedback. Say what you will about the questionable tapered aesthetics, it provides an obvious tactile size difference between the aperture and focus rings for easy blind adjustments on the fly.
X-E1 - XF 23 f2 WR - ISO 200 - f5.6 - 1/640sRegarding aesthetics, the optional vented metal hood looks pretty sharp to me. It also does a great job protecting the lens. Both my hood and XT4 are scratched up from scrambling over rocks with it on my Peak Clip, but the lens itself looks good as new. That said, I got the hood for free included with a used XF 35mm f2 and didn’t have to cough up the premium for it. I’ll echo the thoughts of countless others in saying that for the price Fuji should really just include these “upgraded” hoods as the default option.
Despite being a tiny brick, durability might be a bit of a concern. After a year I noticed the corner sharpness lacking, which I attributed to it just being the smaller, cheaper option. Then after one particular trip ALL my shots on the Xf 23mm F2 were seriously lacking in sharpness, and after a quick experiment recreating the issue in a controlled setting it went off to Fuji Canada for diagnosis. Something had gone off in the focus assembly and was promptly repaired under warranty. Apart from a week long trip of blurry images, the most annoying part was not having the lens for a month. Considering this was at the beginning of covid era shipping times that’s reasonable enough I suppose. It’s been fine since, and I’ll never know if that was simply a manufacturing defect, or maybe I knocked it was getting knocked around a bit too much at one point. It’s the only incident I’ve had with a Fuji lens in 5 years of hard use so I’m not counting it as a mark against them.
Image Quality
The output of this lens is simultaneously it’s strong point and it’s weakness. The reason I love it, and the reason I’m still considering other options. Overall though I’ve been happy with what they’ve packed into this little lens.
Sharpness seems to either be touted as the most important lens characteristic, or somehow detrimental to an image and overrated quality in a lens. Like most extremes in life, it seems the truth lies in the middle. I wouldn’t say I’m a pixel peeper, but I do enjoy wandering around getting lost in the details of an image. My focus is on landscapes and I find it endlessly entertaining to zoom in and find little patterns in the rock of cliff bands, fallen trees across a valley, or any other little hidden gems of detail that I often didn’t even see when I composed the shot. Comes in handy for printing too, which I often do up a reasonable size. I don’t care for over processed clinical sharpness either, but a mushy soft shot loses appeal for me, regardless of how much character it has.
X-T4 - XF 23 f2 WR - ISO 160 - f11 - 1/160sFor the most part the 23mm f2 is plenty sharp enough. The image centre is perfectly acceptable even wide open, and down right crisp stopped down in the f4 to f5.6 range. The corners tell a slightly different story though. They’re a little soft wide open, but again once you’re in the f4 to f5.6 range they become adequate. Assuming it’s partly from the limitations of physics and the smaller elements, but there’s also some extra noise from the corrections in the corner. It’s not enough to be a deal breaker in my books, and it depends what you shoot. If you’re doing street shots or family snaps then generally your subject is well away from the corners and it won’t matter. Sometimes with the landscape compositions the corners are a more important part of the scene, and that’s about the only time it’s an issue.
I’m pretty sure the source of that extra correction noise is the vignetting. Unfortunately it’s quite high wide open, amounting to more than 2 full stops according to Lenstip.com and their testing. Even stopped down it only ever gets a little less than a full stop in the corners. Again, when corrected you’ll probably never notice at a reasonable size, or left uncorrected entirely if it works with the shot. As a general rule though I try to stay away from shooting it wide open unless I have to.
Distortion is a different story, it appears to be fully optically corrected! Great considering its size and somewhat wide angle, and something I wish they did on the rest of the smaller lenses … I’m looking at you XF 16mm f2.8 WR! That little guy is a fish eye in disguise. The 23mm f2 definitely stood out to me as it’s the only of the smaller lenses that doesn’t rely on digital correction to some extent.
I’m not a bokeh aficionado, but it’s nice enough. Being an f2 and somewhat wide angle it won’t have your subject jumping off the page but the out of focus areas are smooth and don’t distract. The lens does focus pretty close offering up a 0.13x magnification so you can force the bokeh a little more, but this brings out another unfortunate characteristic of the lens; close focus image quality. It’s bad. Really bad. Especially wide open. Stop down a fair bit and it becomes usable at f5.6 or f8 even, but that kind of negates any effort to throw the background out of focus by getting close. I’d say this is the biggest mark against it’s image quality. It’s a specific circumstance and it may not matter at all for you, but I do like to shoot little detail shots of mushrooms, rocks, flowers or whatever little tiny scenes I spot along the way. If you never shoot closer than a meter away then don’t even worry about it.
There’s only one other drawback which is hard to quantify. Sometimes it feels as if there’s a bit of a flat feeling … lifelessness, dullness, or something to that extent on the images. It sometimes takes a little more tweaking in post with levels and dynamic range to get the same punch that some other lenses seem to get right out of the raw file. It’s a minor thing, and I wish I could offer up a more scientific answer than that, but the results just don’t always have the same wow factor.
Auto focus is where the lens makes up for some of it’s short comings. It’s incredibly quiet, you can only hear it if you hold it to your ear, and even then it’s aperture movements that are more audible than anything else. It’s also fast! It’s amazing how much bad press Fuji gets about auto focus, mostly directed at the older fast primes, meanwhile the smaller f2/2.8 lenses lock on quickly and confidently. It’s become my go to lens for video meetings during work because it focuses and tracks so confidently. Not that I’d buy a lens specifically for that, but it’s a nice perk. It will lock on kids running around, it will lock on to climbers out when we’re in the shade throwing dynamic moves on boulders, it will lock on to pretty much anything short of shooting flying crows in the dark.
A lot of this sounds like I’m being a little harsh on the poor little lens. Sure it has it’s shortcomings, but those are compromises for the price and small form factor. Overall it performs really well as long as you stay within the parameters of what it’s designed for. Luckily most of what I shoot falls in that category.
X-T4 - XF 23 f2 WR - ISO 160 - f5.6 - 1/400sMy Use Case
For me it’s been my go to do it all adventure lens. It’s the lens that’s strapped to my XT4 on my Peak Design clip while I’m hiking/climbing/scrambling/skinning/otherwise adventuring. It’s small enough to not get in the way of what I’m doing and always at the ready for spontaneous trail antics or beautiful fleeting moment of light. It lets me satisfy my photography bug on adventures while not holding up a speedy group that doesn’t share the same passion. At the same time it can perform well enough for serious photography stopped down and sitting on a tripod, it just might need a few step up rings to match the rest of your kit!
If it’s a light weight climb or splitboard mission I’ll bring just this lens. For backpacking and overnight trips where I’m planning on making photography a priority I’ll usually also bring along the XF 16mm f1.4 WR for the wider end, and the XF 70-300 f4-5.6 LM WR for the longer end. I’m not sure this is my ideal setup, but that’s a whole other topic and it’s just where I’m at right now with what Fuji has available. The lenses may vary over the years, but in concept I think the trifecta of something wide, something normal, and something long has served me well.
I’ll sometimes bring it travelling as well as a single lens option, though usually I prefer a two lens setup for that with something longer and wider. Great for visiting family and snap shots of kids though with that snappy auto focus.
Sometimes it comes along on street photo walks when I’m just getting away from the desk for awhile, but likewise I usually prefer a two lens approach in case I want to mix it up. It’s a few km around town, not like I’m concerned about my base weight!
Summary
It’s an ideal focal length that’s wide enough to capture a vista, or tight enough that a few steps towards a subject will be perfect for a portrait or detail shot with some context. I think the 23mm (35mm FF equivalent) focal length is about as close to a do it all lens as you can get with a prime. All that in a package significantly smaller than any fast prime or zoom offering. Image quality isn’t perfect but still beats out the zooms at the equivalent focal length, and for the weight and price you could toss an XF 50mm f2 WR in your bag as well and still be cheaper and lighter than the XF 16-55 WR. As long as your type of shooting stays within the parameters of what the design was meant for you will not be disappointed!
I give it 3.5 out of 5 potatoes for my use case. If it’s limitations won’t impede your shooting and size of is importance then feel free to add a full potato to that rating.
Alternatives
Disclaimer: In this case I’ve personally used none of these alternatives, so take it for what is is; an educated comparison based on the research I’ve done which led me to buy the XF 23mm f2 in the first place, and to continue using it to this day.
XF 23mm f1.4 LM WR Mk2 - Continuing Fuji’s current trend of updating it’s original fast primes the new Mk2 version is due to start shipping in February. If this new Mk2 performs anything like the recent XF 18mm and XF 33mm then it’s sure to be a hit. I’ve been absolutely loving the XF 33 f1.4 LM WR and if this new 23mm shares those properties then it will definitely tempt me. If best in class image quality and performance is what you’re after look no further, I’m sure this will be it. Biggest question right now is will it be compelling enough that I’m willing to carry twice the lens weight and part with an additional $800CAD above what I’d get for the f2 version. [EDIT March 2022 - I did upgrade to the new one after all!]
XF 23mm f1.4 - The original fast version. If you want the faster aperture for low light portraits and subject isolation, or for shooting flat lays or other detail shots, than this might be worth considering. Can likely be had used for not much more than the f2 version costs new, so really it just depends on your feature priorities. It’s larger size, weight, lack of WR, and seemingly on negligibly better image quality at the apertures I shoot at has kept me away.
XF 27 f2.8 WR - This little guy has crossed my mind. Sometimes even the 23 f2 feels like it’s a tight squeeze in an already full touring pack, so why not go smaller still? The new version has WR and an aperture ring, which the lack of is why I ignored the original. Image quality looks great for what it is, and better still it can shoot something close up competently! Would also solve the occasional “23mm or 33mm?” dilemma. I’ve realized though that it’s still going on an XT4 which isn’t a small body, so does saving 2cm and 80g really make the difference in whether the camera comes or not? Probably not. Also as of February 2022 the XF 27mm f2.8 WR basically doesn’t exist other than buying it with an XE4, so that helps keep it off my radar.